Category: Photo

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The (Honorary) Cats of University Heights: Sammy

Sammy is so spectacular she gets second treatment as special guest to our neighborhood series. Should you ever visit The Hub plaza in Hillcrest, which is adjacent to University Heights, stop by DC Computers. If you’re lucky, a slanky tuxedo furball will be relaxed along a wall—or perhaps she will be in the side room, door ajar, where is her cat tree.

Call her mascot or store mouser. Sammy came to the Mac and PC sales/service shop as a six-week old kitten more than five years ago. Yesterday, one of the clerks pointed to an iMac keyboard, where the little thing lay her first day as a resident. She stays inside even when the outside doors are wide open during the summer heat. 

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The Cats of University Heights: Betty

Some furballs lap up the attention, which I’m happy to give. But their need can really muck up the portraiture, which is the case with Betty (her real name), whom I visited on Nov. 11, 2016 in the alley behind North Avenue up from Madison.

Among the 10 photos shot with Fujifilm X-T1 and Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS lens, this is the only truly usable one; it’s marginal, but I want Betty to participate in the series. Featured Image vitals: f/4.5, ISO 6400, 1/58 sec, 21.4mm. I cropped and auto-tuned White Balance in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The JPEG is converted from RAW. I captured the moment at 5:01 p.m. PST, about 12 minutes after sunset.

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The Cats of University Heights: Scout

On a March 22, 2016 Campus and North Avenues Cat Walk, I spotted Scout—well, my nickname for him. I’ve looked for, but not seen, the furball since. I shot both photos at 6:12 p.m. PDT using the Fujifilm X-T1 and Fujinon XF35mmF2 R WR lens. Another capture was botched, despite best composition of the three, because the focal point fell on the grass instead of the animal.

My guess, looking at the colorization of the images, I used the camera’s Classic Chrome Film Simulation mode, which is a delight. If I rightly recall, Fuji introduced the filter first for the X100T, which I owned before buying the X-T1 in July 2015.